Anything For a Quiet Life (23 page)

“Which will be a great comfort to everyone when he cuts his throat.”

“If he’s decided to kill himself, there’s nothing you or I or anyone can do. Short of putting him in a straitjacket.”

“You don’t often admit yourself beaten,” said Claire. “You can usually think of a way out.”

This was clever of Claire. It was an appeal to Jonas’s professional pride. The result was that he stopped justifying himself and started thinking. He said, “I suppose it would help if we could take the pressure off him. I’ll have a word with Sykes. If he hasn’t put that declaration in yet, I could ask him to hold it up. Then, if the rector agrees, we could tear it up and forget about it. It will cost him a lot of money.”

“It might save his life,” said Claire.

“I’ll go round to the rectory as soon as I can get away tomorrow morning.”

It was nearly eleven o’clock next morning before he could leave the office. Sam had some stuff to pick up on the Lewes road, so he took him in the car with him. When they turned in at the long laurel-shadowed drive and drew up in front of the rectory there was no sign of life. Three rows of windows stared down at them like blind eyes. No birds were singing.

“Gloomy sort of place,” said Sam. “Wouldn’t care to live here myself.”

“Something’s happened,” said Jonas. The silence was so overpowering that he had to stop himself from speaking in a whisper. “I wish I’d come round sooner.”

“Better go in and find out, hadn’t you?”

“I suppose so.” It was an effort to move.

“Like me to come along?”

Jonas took a grip of himself. “No,” he said. “Stay here. But turn the car round.”

He jumped out, walked briskly up the front steps and jerked the old-fashioned bell pull. He could hear the bell jangling. But no sound of life.

He tried the front door. It was unlocked. He opened it and stepped through into the hall. As the last echoes of the bell died away he heard something else. In the room at the far end of the passage someone was sobbing.

David was worried. His father had been his friend and his confidant for as many years as he could remember. Now something had happened to upset him. He could observe the physical signs, but without understanding what lay behind them. The fingers which moved as though he was playing on a silent piano; the curiously distant look in the grey eyes; the livid wounds that had opened under them.

His aunt, too, had been behaving oddly. She seemed unwilling to leave her brother alone for more than five minutes, but would come bustling in with plans and suggestions, most of them stupid in David’s opinion. At breakfast that morning, whilst she had been there, almost nothing had been said. When she left the room, animation had returned.

His father had started to talk, entertainingly and informatively, about birds. About the cuckoo, who had just opened his spring solo; about the vanguard of the house martins who were ejecting the sparrows from the nests they had appropriated in the absence of their owners during the winter. Better still, he had proposed an expedition.

“We’ll take sandwiches and make a day of it. I thought we might go up Scarr Down. A boy told me there was a colony of chaffinches building there.”

“Right up to the top of the Down? You mean the Druids’ Stone?”

“Is that what they call it?” For a moment the animation had gone and the old bleak look was back in his father’s eyes. With rare tact for a boy of eight David broke off what he had been going to say; the gruesome but exciting things other boys had told him about the Druids’ Stone. Instead he said, “Shall I cut the sandwiches?”

“I cut them before breakfast. They’re in my knapsack.”

“Shall I tell Aunt B what we’re going to do?”

“No, I’ll tell her. You get your windcheater. You’ll need it up on the tops. Wait for me in the drive.”

If David had shut the front door, as his father had intended, he would have heard nothing. He rather wished he had shut it, because what he did hear was unusual and upsetting. First it was the talk in the kitchen. It seemed to go on for a long time. Then, something he had never heard before, his father was shouting. Loudly and angrily. Between the shouts he could hear his aunt’s high-pitched protests. Then a door slammed and his father came striding back down the hall. He had his knapsack over one shoulder and a stick in his hand.

David said, “What was Aunt B going on about?”

“She thought the climb to Scarr Down would be too much for you.”

“That’s nonsense. I’ve been twice as far as that.”

“So I told her, Davy. Come on, then.”

As they went David slipped his small hand into the large one swinging beside him and father and son went down the drive hand in hand.

When Jonas reached the kitchen and looked inside he realised that Mrs Baxter was on the verge of a hysterical breakdown. As soon as she saw him she started talking, but nothing that came out made much sense.

He heard what sounded like ‘atonement’, then something about the Druids’ Stone, which was a monument he had once visited. Then, suddenly, out of the froth and jumble of words came two names that did mean something to him, ‘Abraham’ and ‘Isaac’. When he heard them, all alarm bells started ringing together. He stepped forward, swung his arm and smacked Mrs Baxter’s face with his open hand.

The sobs were cut off and she looked up as though she was seeing him for the first time.

“Are you telling me,” said Jonas, “that your brother has taken David up to Scarr Down?”

“Yes.”

“How long ago?”

“About half an hour.”

He said, “And you let them go? After he’d as good as told you what he meant to do?”

Mrs Baxter raised a tear-streaked face. “How could I stop him? He’s insane—”

But Jonas was no longer there.

Sam had turned the car and when he saw Jonas come running down the steps he started to move over. Jonas said, “Stay where you are. You’re a better driver than me. We shall have to move fast.”

“Where to, skipper?”

“Scarr Down. Head for the golf club. There’s a side road just before you get there.”

By this time they were in the road that circled the industrial estate. A van pulled out ahead of them. Jonas said, “Pass it.”

“Ho!” said Sam. “Necks for sale, is it?” He squeezed past the van, swinging in with inches to spare in front of an indignant car coming the other way. “If there’s one thing I don’t like it’s drivers what sound their horns at you just because they’re scared.”

“Concentrate on driving,” said Jonas. He was studying the map. “The turning’s about two hundred yards ahead. Just past that white cottage. Got it? Right. Don’t dawdle.”

It was a country lane, clearly too narrow for cars to pass at speed. If they met anything head on they would both go to glory. Sam uttered a short prayer.

“Next turning to the right.”

This was a track, deeply rutted in places by the farm carts which had used it. The car bounced and juddered. Jonas realised that he could never have controlled it. His foot would have been on and off the accelerator and they would have been stalling and starting. As the track started to climb there was a quagmire left by the recent rain. If they had not been going at a fair speed they would have been helplessly bogged. As it was they had just enough momentum to reach the firm ground beyond and skidded out, sideways. Sam wrenched the car back on to the track. For a stretch, though the track was going steeply uphill, it offered no obstacles.

Sam found a moment to grab a handkerchief out of his pocket and wipe away some of the sweat that was pouring down his forehead.

They could see the top of the Down now and the single stone standing up against the sky.

The footpath to the Druids’ Stone ran, straight and uncompromising, up the shoulder of the Down. The man and the boy tackled it steadily, pausing from time to time to look back. As they climbed, their line of sight cleared the trees and houses and the sea came into view, lead and silver under the April sky. They seemed to have the world to themselves.

Rabbits thumped on the turf and bolted back to their burrows as they approached. Above them a hawk swung in the sky. He was not interested in the two humans toiling up the path. He was watching the rabbits.

“Nearly there,” said the rector.

Neither of them had spoken much. David was saving his breath for the climb. His father’s thoughts were far away; beyond the hills, across the sea, in a country of his own making.

In an open circle of turf at the top were two stones, one flat, the other upright at the end of it. David said, “The boy who told you chaffinches built in a place like this must have been crazy.”

The rector sat on the edge of the flat stone, slipping the knapsack off his shoulders and putting it down carefully beside him. He said, “I brought you here to tell you something, Davy. Come and sit here.”

David came over and squatted beside him.

“You know how much I love you. You know that you are more precious to me than anything in the whole world.”

Most boys would have been embarrassed. David had lived alone with his father so long that nothing he said or did had the power to surprise or worry him. Instead he turned his attention to the important question of what his father had brought for their picnic. He fiddled open the clasp of the knapsack and looked inside.

The rector had put out a hand to stop him, but realising that it was too late he sat quite still.

David started to laugh. “Silly Daddy,” he said. “Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve brought the knife and forgotten the bread.” He loved knives. This was a beauty, with a black handle, a copper tang and a shining blade. His father took it from him gently and laid it down on the stone beside him.

“What were you going to tell me?” said David.

“We’re going on a journey.”

“You and me?”

“Yes. I shall be with you.”

“Are we going far?”

“Very far.” The words seemed to be choking him.

“And is that car coming to fetch us?”

The rector leaped up. Standing, he could hear the sound of the car which had been masked by the slope of the hill and could see the dust of its passage.

It was heading straight for them.

The rector said, in a loud voice, “Blessed be the Lord who has taken this burden from me. Run, David, quickly. See who is coming.”

David moved off obediently. He was worried because his father was behaving so oddly, but he was not frightened. He recognised Jonas and said, “Hello, Mr Pickett. I’d no idea you could get a car up as far as this. It must have been some drive.”

“It was,” said Sam grimly.

Jonas jumped out and walked across the clearing. At the far side it fell away into a small cliff. He peered over the edge, swung round and came back. He said, “David, I’m afraid your father’s fallen and hurt himself. You must go back quickly with Sam to fetch help.”

For a moment the boy hesitated. Then he said, “You’ll stay with him, sir?”

“Yes,” said Jonas. “I’ll stay with him.” And to Sam, “Bring Jack Queen if you can find him.”

When the car had bumped off down the track he went back to the far side of the clearing, parted the bushes and looked over. Then he made his way cautiously down to where the rector lay. The knife had been driven upwards, under his ribs and into his heart. Both his hands were still clasped round the handle.

That evening, after everything had been done that had to be done – after Mrs Baxter had taken charge of David and Inspector Queen had taken charge of the body – Jonas was sitting in his office with Sam and the office whisky bottle. He had poured out a second glass for both of them. He was thinking that one thing he would have to do was apologise to Claire for ignoring her repeated warnings. Tomorrow would do for that.

“Are you telling me,” said Sam, “that he was going to kill that nipper?”

“Yes.”

“For the Lord’s sake, why?”

“Because he had sinned. And the only expiation he could make was to sacrifice his most precious possession. I’ve no doubt he intended to kill himself immediately afterwards.”

“And our arrival stopped him knocking off the kid?”

“I don’t think it was quite like that. I think he took our arrival as a sign that he had been spared from making the sacrifice. What counted, you see, was his willingness to do it.”

“Was that what happened in the story you were telling me about Abraham and Isaac?”

“It’s some time since I read it,” said Jonas. “But I seem to remember that in that case it was an angel who appeared at the last moment.”

“Angels, is it?” said Sam. “That’s a new one.” He finished his drink thoughtfully.

On the morning of Tuesday, July 14th, Fred, the jobbing gardener, arrived at old Dr Rainey’s front gate at nine o’clock precisely. One of the things people liked about Fred and which made them willing to pay him four pounds an hour for an eight-hour day was that he really did work for eight hours. And, as a result, he never lacked employment. His Mondays and Tuesdays belonged to Dr Rainey; Wednesdays and Thursdays to Mr and Mrs McClachan; and Fridays and Saturdays to Sabrina Mountjoy, who had taken him over when she bought Captain Horrocks’s house and glad to do so. Being a partner in Jonas Pickett’s legal practice was, she maintained, a full-time job.

Fred hobbled round the house and down to his private kingdom, which was the potting shed at the bottom of the garden. His limp was the result of war service. Apart from this, despite his seventy years, his frugal habits and open air life had preserved his health and strength marvellously.

“Looks more like fifty than seventy,” Mrs McClachan often remarked to her husband. “And strong as a horse.” Her husband, who was in fact fifty and looked more like sixty, agreed with her resentfully. He played a lot of golf, but it seemed to do nothing for his waistline.

Fred set to work without delay. There was a lot to do in a vegetable garden at that time of year. The asparagus was finished and the runner beans were to come, but the French beans, the peas and the Jerusalem artichokes were all flourishing and the new potatoes, carrots and little globe turnips were in course of being dug up and stored for the winter.